


The one where it doesn't work

by orphan_account



Series: The various complications of magic [2]
Category: Ghost - Mystery Skulls (Music Video), Mystery Skulls (Band)
Genre: Gen, Incorrect psychological analysis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the first fic of the series, Consequences, to get what's going on.

He arranges everything. He speaks the words clearly for once in his life, he's drawn everything to scale, purchases candles just for the effect, but it doesn't work. He tries two, three, four times by the time Lewis wakes up and notices his missing locket, arranging and rearranging things in the room in the hopes that he won't mess this up too. By the time Lewis knocks on his door for his locket he's washed everything down, scrubbed the floors clean. By the time Mystery knocks on the door for dinner the book is burning in the fire place and all his tears are wiped.

He is quiet for the celebration. The celebration that is the anniversary of the day he pushed Lewis off a cliff into his death. He eats but not as much as he usually would. They think it's guilt and it is, but it's also disappointment. Maybe if he wanted Lewis alive more, then it would work. Maybe he should've tried one more time. Maybe...

Lewis and Vivi eventually get through the obstacles surrounding their relationship and Arthur, eventually feels the impulse to research revival techniques lessen. He still has nightmares that haunt him in shades of green. Still has to look away when Lewis comes too close but after awhile it doesn't matter anymore. Eventually he can't handle it. He walks away one day, no final goodbye to hold him down, to make him hesitate. He leaves in the night and by morning there are voicemails in his inbox and text messages by the dozen. He does not answer them.

He still hears them via news sites and newspaper clippings but he does not pay attention to their location. He doesn't count the miles they're apart or mark maps, imagining the road trips they're having without him.

A few months later and he's living in a one bedroom apartment, visiting his therapist religiously. A few years later and he stops taking care of his prosthetic to the point that it does not move anymore, rusted and dangerous to his human skin. He still plays out the day in his head, the regrets and the 'could haves' and it haunts him but it's better this way. Right?

He still looks up supernatural stuff in his spare time. Stories and myths of men rising from the dead. Gods and mistresses in the world of the living who are sucker for love stories; who'll grant life if it is tearful enough. Their story is pretty tearful. He wonders if they've found one, someone to grant Lewis life. He deserves it more than Arthur. He stays up for days and obsesses, copying links, reading stories and then goes to his therapist red eyed and tired and they just tutt. " _Oh Arthur, you've lost yourself in a cycle."_ and " _Ghosts aren't real. You've experienced a traumatic event and are making it more bearable by trying to manifest it into a supernatural being."_ while shoving bottle of pills into his hands.

He wonders what they're doing now.


	2. The One Where They Meet Again

He's moving on, slowly but surely: his prescriptions has lessened, he's out of his two minimum wage jobs and moved on to a little mechanic job. He's gone back to repairing his arm semi-regularly so it doesn't creep out the customers as much with its rust and its squeaks. He's still looking up paranormal stuff online, more than his therapist is comfortable with but he specifically blocks the words 'mystery skull' from his google searches. There are no such things as ghosts, no such thing as demon foxes that look like dogs. There are no such things as spirits that can possess people. If he repeats it enough maybe he'll stop having nightmares.

It's an unassuming day, the little suburbia he's ultimately settled in is one of the less haunted places in America, not even a cemetery in the town. It's good for his mental state but awfully boring. So when he walks into the garage and hears about some car that broke down last night he thinks maybe old lady Owens finally needs to have her driver's license redacted or maybe the PE teacher finally needs to let go of his old car.

He's not expecting the Mystery Skulls van in all its war-torn glory. The paint is a little chipped, mud dirtying the tires but besides that it's exactly the same. The purple seats, the golden interior, the smell of junk food and wet dog, even the old blue fuzz toy Lewis won from the arcade hanging from the rearview mirror; its yellow tongue sticking out at Arthur like a bad omen.

He runs away. There's nothing for it. He's not the main mechanic, just a helping hand and they all know about his issues; the bottles of pills sitting in his locker.

Ghosts don't exist. He repeats the mantra in his head along with the other things therapists have told him for years. A trauma event. His mind so broken it made supernatural beings as a reasoning device, personas, schizophrenia.  _Not really there_.

He goes home and curls up in a ball in his room, rocking back and forth like a kid who watched too many scary movies. He disassembles his arm and puts it back together again, a nervous habit he's developed and his therapists have tried to rid him of.

Start at the fingers, slowly unscrew from left to right: the thumb, the pointer finger, middle finger, fourth finger, pinky. Watch as the wires stretch as the fingers sag, move them experimentally and watch as the appendages dance like puppets attached to multi-colored string.

Remove the wrist. Just two screws holding palm to lower arm. The elbow coming off easily and the rest of the arm unlocks with a click. He leaves the wires on and reassembles, does everything in reverse. Rinse, repeat. He does it until the crickets come out and even then he doesn't stop until he realizes most of the screws are on the floor and he's too lazy to get them from under the bed.

Even then he can't sleep. He has sleeping pills but they taste bitter on his mouth and so he thinks about the van. If - If he goes back to the garage and meets them - If Lewis is there then that means ghosts are real. But what if there is no Lewis? What if it's all in his head? What about Mystery? Did he really talk or did his mind come up with a voice to lip synch with, conjuring a voice of reason in his life of insanity.

He gets up, his metal arm only assembled to the elbow and wires pulled taut. He goes to the bathroom. It's been about five years since he's seen them. He wonders what they look like now while looking at his own reflection. Where once there was a lively if not anxiety riddled boy now there was a man with empty eyes, untrimmed beard and shaggy hair. He runs his good hand through his thick, dark beard feeling coarse hair. He tugs lightly at his chin length blonde hair that flops against his face.

He could take care of two of the three.

He takes out the razor. He doesn't know why but he takes out the razor and the scissors and when he's done he looks almost the same. He doesn't have the puffy orange vest anymore or the short sleeve tees. Traded it for an orange mechanic suit and some long sleeves to stave off the stares but he doesn't look so bad if he says so himself. He's stopped buying hair gel so the hair still looks wrong but he looks almost like...

He ends up cracking the mirror. Takes the rest of his arm discarded on the bed and whacks it until all he can see is splintered copies of himself. He gets a vision. A cracked mirror in a purple void. He doesn't know why he sees that. He cries, awful sobs not befitting a man in his late twenties but he was never brave. No, that was Lewis. (But Lewis doesn't exist).

He doesn't show up for work for the rest of the week and only goes out to order fast food, a baseball cap firmly on his head and turtle neck on despite summer heat. No one asks because they all know about Crazy Artie.

A week passes in which he gets updated: "That Mystery Skull van is fixed. Will you show up now?" He wants to. He wants to because he's been constantly missing work and he's still getting paid and he feels guilty but he doesn't feel like it. He can't get through the thick sludge that fogs his mind. He stays in bed pointedly not looking up any paranormal stuff on his phone and when he gets hungry at around noon he puts on his orange robe and trudges to the nearest fast food place, a little coffee shop around the block, and sits on the fire escape to eat because his therapists thought it was good if he got fresh air. They probably didn't mean eating on one of the steps overlooking a dirty alley next to the coffee shop. Too bad.

It's cold outside and Arthur draws his worn robe nearer. He chew slowly, the sub stale in his mouth. He always gets the stales.

Birds always fly by, asking for crumbs patiently and he thinks nothing of holding his hand out with crumbs once something on his peripheral moves. He likes the feeling of birds pecking on his good hand, it's cathartic.

"No thanks." And Arthur drops the rest of his sandwich because  _that voice_. He looks up, into brown eyes and yellow spectacles.

Mystery looks exactly the same and Arthur remembers that movie; the one with the math genius who was a schizophrenic. He remembers how the guy found he was schizophrenic, his illness not taking to account age. The dog hasn't looked to have aged a year, which is saying something because dogs age faster than humans.

"You're not real." Arthur says, he stands hastily, pushing past the illusion and down the steps. He walks, then he breaks out to a sprint then he runs, runs home. He closes the door behind him and remembers to breathe. One, two, three. In and out. In and out.

"Arthur?" Mystery asks. Arthur turns around and there the dog is raising one of his paws in askance. Arthur laughs, sad and manic and slides down the door. He covers his eyes. He imagines the apartment, the place he's been calling home for about three years now.

Inside there are sparse furnishings all kept in the dark by long curtains. In the foyer there is a simple brown carpet with stains born from clumsiness. There is a small table at the side with a little bowl, inside which are keys and pens. The foyer closet is mostly empty, a spare place to keep documents in a big brown manilla packet. The living room sports a tiny TV looked to be taken from a junkyard, it still has antennas. The coffee table has stains and a bottle of pills, the little couch creaky and uncomfortable but good enough for someone with insomnia.

The kitchen is a mess of uncleaned dishes, the laundry room long gone of soap, the bedroom has clothes everywhere and a bulky toolbox poking out from under the bed. Looking from outside the window they'd see a man pace, back and forth, back and forth in his bedroom, and if they were to look closer they'd see foot tracks from where he paced, dust collecting on the bottom of his feet.

There is no dog in his apartment. There is no fox demon. It is just him and the bugs who crawl in his bedroom. He opens his eyes.

And the dog is still there.

"You're not real." He murmurs at the same time he opens his phone and opens his notes. Types in "Ghosts are not real" over and over again. His hands shake and his thumbs sometimes mistypes but the sentiment is the same. He writes the phrase for the better part of minutes and hours before he stands, ignores the hallucination in his doorway and goes to the cabinets. He fumbles with the lid but he dry swallows the pills down like he's been doing it for most of his life. He has.

"You're still here?" He asks of the specter in his doorway, looking so forlornly at him. "I haven't done any crazy things in a long time. I don't need reason now."

The dog pads up to him, dissecting him and looking oh so sorry and he doesn't need it. He doesn't need it.

"Arthur what happened to you? We were searching all over you. We thought you had died, that someone had kidnapped you."

"I left." Arthur says even though he privately resolved not to talk directly to it.  _A laugh, a wet nose sniffing his face, a happy bark and a wagging tail (red eyes, a growl, long tails like snakes covered in fur, a pitying look)_   **FAKE ALL FAKE**. Constructs of a failing mind.

"Left?" Mystery asks as if it was preposterous. As if Arthur was the one who was crazy instead of the talking dog. Seeing as how the talking dog was his own subconscious it was right. "Why didn't you say goodbye?"

He doesn't answer because his throat is full and his vision is blurring. He goes and texts his therapist, "I'm seeing them again." He hits send right when the dog takes his phone away, slapping it with his paw. He lets it fall to the floor with a pathetic clang. It lies at his feet, the cracked screen staring at him and all he can think about is purple voids.

"I'm calling Lewis and Vivi." The specter says and he lets it because he's descending into madness and might as well descend with friends right? He leaves the room and the dog behind to tamper with the phone. He goes into his bedroom and plops down, falling asleep swiftly. The dog could do whatever it wanted. It doesn't matter anymore.

When he awakes it's to voices in his house and the smell of food. He checks the time and feels relieved and disappointed. The medicine's kicked in by now, no more talking dogs, no more pretend people trying to take over his life. He pads into the kitchen expecting to see his next door neighbor who'd come over sometimes and baby him or maybe his boss who asked for a key to his apartment just in case. He pops in sometimes when he skips out on work too much and while a week would've been nothing a year ago, he's been getting better. He was getting better.

He notices the bags of groceries first, laid out on his little dinner room table. "You don't have to get this much you know. How am I going to pay you back otherwise?"

That's when he notices the lack of noises, as if everything was on pause. He looks up to a man in purple and a girl in blue. (A color scheme, more proof of his illness, his therapists said.)

Lewis, Lewis looks exactly the same as he died, ascot and stupid purple sweater. He looks like he hasn't aged a bit and that would be fine. That would mean he never existed. Except Vivi is taller, her outfits changed and she has new glasses, still purple but not half-moons. She's gotten a haircut, it's shorter more chin length than the barely shoulder length he remembers; dark blue hairpins instead of the headbands she had by the dozen.

He runs away before they get a chance to respond, out the door except Lewis, Lewis floats up from the floor and traps him.

"Just a nightmare." Arthur repeats as he squeezes his eyes shut. "Just a nightmare."

"Arthur?" He feels pressure on his shoulder, where metal meets flesh but the brain can be funny that way.

He squeezes his eyes shut and puts his hands to his ears.

"Just a nightmare."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna do a December, fic daily thing! So expect to see a bunch of fic that I made from nanowrimo. I'm gonna post more than one fandom so it's not gonna be a daily msa fic but if you like my stories, check out my others ones.
> 
> The movie Arthur mentioned was A Beautiful Mind. This was unbeta'd so the errors are all mine.
> 
> Dedicated to boxesofboxes, sorry I was so late in posting this and I didn't even tie up the story. Expect another chapter sometime around December.


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